Many data-dynamic network applications, such as websites, use various data storage methods, such as “cookies” or traditional fixed-schema databases, to maintain “session data” during consumer interaction with the application using a network client. Such data is determined, by implementation, to be necessary for consistent and designed behavior of the application relative to the current consumer contexts. Conditions such as security permissions, user rights, browser window layout, shopping cart contents, and other data need to be propagated to subsequent pages or User Interface (UI) renderings, without continual re-derivation of data values. A significant network application design task for developers is to determine globally required session data for generic consumer interaction, and to implement the bulk of the state data within any network communication with a state-less user interface, and upon each rendering of any natively state-less user interface. This is required because a thin-client network device, such as a web browser, may have no native ability to store or manage extensible consumer data, and each UI rendering requires data which has been re-transported from a server for the specific UI rendering.
Some network interfaces, such as many PDA applications, and the Firefox web browser, commercially available from Mozilla Corporation, Mountain View Calif., use small local data stores which exist upon the network interface device to maintain rote required data for their operation. These data stores are limited in extensibility, and are device or software specific. Network applications which use interfaces employing such state management technologies typically have limited or no access to the native data storage function of the proprietary technology, or must accommodate proprietary technologies, per interface instance.
In cases of consumer interaction with a thin network client, all state data is transmitted to and from a network server to enable specific UI renderings, such as the drawing of a specific page, to which a website user has navigated. In these cases, it would be beneficial to system performance to transport only such state data required for specific instances of specific consumers interacting with specific UI renderings, e.g. just the relevant portions of the “cookie”, rather than to transport all state data, e.g. the whole “cookie”, upon each required UI interface rendering.
Accordingly, a need exist for a system and technique to process and transport only that state data relevant to a specific UI instance, rather than to transport all state data, upon each required UI interface rendering.
A further need exists for a system and technique to maintain greater amounts of state data for the application session.
A still further need exists for a system and technique to maintain greater amounts of state data for the application session with equivalent system performance.
Yet another need exists for a system and technique to optimize the delivery and maintenance of composite or complex valued data to thin clients such as internet browsers and mobile devices.